Hi, John,
You have a big learning curve ahead. Good luck. I hope the group doesn't mind my repeating an earlier post.
---------- Digitizing versus conversion.
There are a lot of graphics formats out there -- BMP, JPG, GIF. There are also a lot of embroidery formats out there -- HUS, PES, etc.
What do the latter have that the former don't? They may look similar on a screen, but the embroidery files carry a lot more information than a simple graphics file does. What fill stitch? What orientation (direction), length, density? In what order are the sections to be stitched?
None of this information is available from a BMP or JPG. That's why a lot of the discussion you see here is about converting between existing embroidery formats. The stitch information has already been established; when converting, the question is how to get it from one proprietary format to another.
When you're starting with a graphics file (or an image in your head), and you're trying to produce that as a machine embroidery file, that's digitizing; taking that image, or concept, and executing it as a fully realized stitched product. That's when high-end digitizers and learning curves come into play.
There are easy-to-use, inexpensive tools such as Embird, that are very useful but won't let you create a design from scratch. For many users, that's okay. You can download designs in different formats; resize them; eliminate unwanted elements, as was recently noted in another thread; change colors, add text; combine results; etc. But you won't be able to take a bitmap file and turn it into an embroidery file.
Digitizing is an art in itself. The better vendors of digitized images have put a lot of effort into producing files that will sew well under a variety of circumstances. That's not to say the hobbyist won't also achieve good results, but I'm still going through that learning process, and I have the test stitch-outs to show for it.